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Andy Goldsworthy |
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WHAT'S THAT THING OVER THERE? The exhibition's and Goldsworthy's problems are evident in the "Three Cairns" of the show's title. Only one of these cairns is in San Diego. Like many of Goldsworthy's cairns of past years, it's a large, pear-shaped structure hunkered down at the base of huge tree at the end of the sidewalk in front of the museum. From its first meeting with the eye, its Ruben-esque mass looks disturbingly out of balance with the lean geometry of the museum's architecture and strikingly alien to any visual sensibility one might identify as "Southern California."
Similarly alien is the material with which the cairn is constructed -- Iowa limestone. Iowa limestone?. Iowa's a long way off. But there's an explanation. It's the same material with which the other two cairns in "Three Cairns" are constructed. One of these cairns actually is in Iowa; at the Des Moines Art Center, where the exhibition project originated. The third is in New York, at the Neuberger Art Museum, in Purchase. The same shaped cairn, of the same material, at all three locations. This reveals Goldsworthy's grand scheme for this trio of shows -- a continent spanning line of cairns. What's more troubling, by using Iowa limestone all over the country, he does the opposite of what he's most appreciated for: using the materials found at a site to produce a work of art at the site. This betrays, at least weakens, the most profound image-concept the cairns can evoke: that of humans, from the beginning of their time, piling stones into distinctive shapes to mark their world and their presence in it. Goldsworthy's art owes a tremendous debt to this primeval sensibility. To so thoroughly obscure it seems wholly unnecessary and inexplicable. There's stone in New York and there's stone in Southern California. He could have shaped identical cairns in each location using local or relatively local stone and avoided this problem, but he chose not to. Perhaps he was saving the organizers some money. Certainly he saved himself the trouble of searching out the right material and the right fabricator in each location. But neither is sufficient justification for abandoning the intimacy with a site that is the essence of his art. The consequence is a mortal wound to the work, and a kind of cheating on those who come to the exhibition with hopes of experiencing the full character of Goldsworthy's art. |
